If we had reached the mountaintop of Martin Luther King’s dreams, maybe we could all just be humans and not see colour.

But this is not our reality.

Black children rarely see themselves represented in the history they learn at school, and when they do, the role is often that of the victim.

Some white children never have the chance to meet an adult of colour, let alone be taught by one. We’re aiming to change that.

Context is everything

African Activities CIC is a collective of African artists sharing African arts with schools and community groups across the UK, with the aim of deepening an understanding of African culture and history.

We believe that when teaching arts and culture, context is everything, and that an art form cut adrift from its roots is a story half told. Using music to carry our stories enables us to share our histories in the way they have always been told.

Many of our school workshops use drumming. This is not only traditional drumming; this diverse and vibrant art form has evolved and taken on modern twists, like any other.

The Anglo Ga of the Volta region in Ghana have a particularly vibrant version (including some funky dances).

But drumming does provide a link with the past, and is a means of preserving oral history.

We are lucky to have griots (the storytellers who are the keepers of this oral tradition) leading our workshops for us.

Children learn about many aspects of African culture. Our energetic drumming sessions include movement and song as we explore the history of the drums and their modern significance.

A workshop might focus on the dances of the Ewe people to tell the stories of migration from modern-day Nigeria, through Togo and Benin and into Ghana where they have currently settled.

Or students could be taken on a journey back to the dawn of time itself in the rift valley or wandering through the chill of modern-day London as the Windrush generation disembarked for the first time.

Textile workshops show children how to stamp and print cloths using the symbols of the Ashanti people, which represent proverbs.

In recycling workshops, children turn milk bottles into masks inspired by those used by the Dogon, Fon, Ashanti and Gonga ethnic groups.

Sharing stories, sharing histories

Through these activities, we tell tales of kings and queens, regiments of female warriors, gold and riches, knowledge and compassion.

Africa is full of surprises, from Zimbabwe in the south - which traded with China before Europe had civilisation - to the north and the birthplace of universities in 13-century Timbuktu.

We question why people learn about William Wilberforce before the abolitionist campaigner Olaudah Equiano, or Yaa Asantewa, the Ashanti queen mother who led a war against British colonialism.

Why would people contend that the pyramids were more likely to be completed by aliens than by Africans? Why would black history in Europe begin with slavery and the Windrush and not with black Roman emperors such as Septimius Severus?

Enslaved, not slaves

Many children may not have considered the issues around using the word “slave”. While people may have been enslaved, they never became slaves - they remained people no matter how oppressed they were.

In an inner-city, multi-ethnic school, tensions between those of differing heritages are still very real. A sore this deep is not one that heals hidden in the dark, where it festers and putrefies.

For us, learning about African history and culture is about addressing this inequity and reclaiming the past for all of us.

We know history is not always comfortable. One of the most powerful Ashanti symbols is Sankofa: which is literally translated as “go back and get it”.

It means that it is never a sin to look back at our history and to use this to inform our future decisions and our path.

We choose unity, but we will never get there pretending it was always this way. By shining a light on history we hope we can create a more unified future.

Kwame Bakoji-Hume is the director of African Activities CIC, a collaboration of African artists in the UK working to share knowledge of African arts and culture and reframe the narrative around Africa and blackness in UK schools